When he was growing up, there was never much doubt in Bruce A. Elmore, Jr.’s mind about the career path he intended to follow. His father, Bruce A. Elmore, Sr., was a prominent Asheville trial lawyer and state legislator, and his maternal grandfather and an uncle were also attorneys.
Bruce was 10 years old when he first saw a trial — his father, before a jury and a judge — and at age 14 he’d begun working in his father’s firm on occasion and during the summer.
Bruce headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focused on becoming a lawyer as soon as possible. He received both his undergraduate degree and his J.D. at UNC. Bruce became a lawyer after completing his second year of law school and passing the bar exam — the final year of a program that made that possible — and returned to Asheville in 1976 to join his father’s firm.
More than 40 years later, Bruce has compiled a stellar record following in his father’s footsteps as a prominent plaintiff’s attorney representing the working people of western North Carolina. He has secured millions of dollars in recoveries for injured clients and has been named one of America’s Top 100 Attorneys. Bruce has also been selected to Martindale-Hubbell’s Bar Register of Preeminent Attorneys in North Carolina in the fields of personal injury and medical malpractice.
Bruce’s father died in 2009. In recent years, Bruce had maintained a solo practice. But he and attorney Ruth Smith, who was also working solo, decided to join forces to create The Elmore and Smith Law Firm, PC in early 2019.
The two lawyers have had a professional relationship since 2002, when they were both involved in the legal resolutions of a tragic jail fire in Mitchell County that claimed the lives of nine inmates. Each represented the estates of two of the victims, and they maintained contact ever since.
Associations / Memberships
• The Buncombe County Bar Association
• North Carolina State Bar
• North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers
• Association of Trial Lawyers of America
• Million Dollar Advocates Forum
• Chapter of the American Civil
• Law Dragon Top 500 Leading Lawyers in America
• Marquis Who’s Who in America
